Before I was a Catholic, I often wondered, “What’s so good about Good Friday? It seems like such a horrible thing.”

In truth, the answer to this question is the story of the saints and the story of the Church.

In general, as Jean-Marie Lustiger notes,

The death of Christ at one and the same time unmasks sin, shows the measure of sin, makes possible forgiveness, and opens the path of life. For there to be forgiveness, sin must be made known… When the Law is loved and obeyed in the person of the obedient Son – to the point of identifying himself to the holy will – the accomplishment, and thus sin itself, is made known: “He was made a curse and made sin for us” (Gal 3:13; 2 Cor 5:21).

And on that day,

Forgiveness was effectively given to all: the [Jewish] people by the blood spilled out on them; the pagans who recognized Jesus as “a just man” and “Son of God”; the apostles by the mercy that Christ gives them; the high priest in the promise of the vision of the “Son of Man”. To each, the hope of forgiveness is given and it is for this that the sin of all is revealed.

Even on those who said that his blood would be on them – it is a promise or hope of forgiveness and mercy, for the blood of the New Alliance brings life.

All this is speaking in general. Good Friday is light and life! In Good Friday, Jesus is being glorified – and his Father, too.

– –

One of the other good things is that Jesus, tortured and dying, taught us by example. The saints have meditated on this truth. For example, we have Blessed Charles de Foucauld’s “Prayer of Abandonment”:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures –
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

In teaching by example, Jesus, of course, has taught much more than this, and the living tradition of the Church shows it. But here we have something special for a contemplative soul thrust into the highways and byways of the world: “Let only your will be done… in all your creatures – I wish no more than this.” And: “Into your hands I commend my soul… with boundless confidence.”

– –

Another good thing is that Jesus died the death of love. In an absolute sense, it is the only death of love this world has seen. He knew what he was getting into with the Incarnation. Although the full truth probably had not penetrated all the areas of his mind from birth (he did, after all grow in wisdom, Lk 2:40), it surely was inchoately there. In fact, Saint John of the Cross tells us two good things.

• If God were to flood the conscious mind with everything he is, the soul would be ruptured from the body, i.e., the person would die. (This teaching is not unique to Saint John; Saint Francis de Sales said something similar and applied it to the Blessed Virgin.)
• The soul is its holiest and most absorbed in God when it is most alienated from itself, most emptied and most able to receive God; and Jesus was most alienated from himself on the Cross.

In other words, Jesus’ death was both predetermined by his love and formed by his love through the alienation that his persecutors forced on him in revealing their own sin – and ours. No human action has ever been so good as this. No human action has ever been so caused by love.

– –

What else is good about Good Friday? So much. It is the story of the saints and the Church. It is a mystery of light, life, and love that is made present again each and every time Mass is said.